


tell me (i’m ten feet down)

by olddarkmachine



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: 3+1 format, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Fix-It, For Lack Of A Better Term, M/M, Post-Canon, id rather consider it more of a continuation of what didnt get to be told
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-20 09:29:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17020125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/olddarkmachine/pseuds/olddarkmachine
Summary: A reason, a continuation, and a reunion.The first time Shiro’s drunken thoughts find Keith’s name at the bottom of a bottle, he’s twenty-four, and they’re in the middle of a war.





	tell me (i’m ten feet down)

**Author's Note:**

> I won’t lie you guys, I am really proud of this. Who woulda thunk that all this craziness woulda been the inspiration I needed to get out of my writing rut.
> 
> A playlist to set the mood: [Drunk Me](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiA-7xHM8zc), [An Evening I Will Not Forget](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JS8mYXlN0B4), [When the Party's Over](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbMwTqkKSps) and [Wicked Twisted Road](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B38pNFM9a3k)

The first time Shiro’s drunken thoughts find Keith’s name at the bottom of a bottle, he’s twenty-four, and they’re in the middle of a war.

It’s an errant thing, fuzzed at its edges, and saccharine, filled with all the same heat of warmed honey.

First, he chalks it up as a lingering thought. One that belonged to  _him_ , as if he was any different than Shiro was. Made up of the same blood and bone, their desires, their hopes, and their dreams all rang the same. The only difference was,  _he_  had never lied.

Not to himself.

Not when it’d counted.

 _I love you_ , the thought spirals, adding a new headiness to that of the sweet wine that has stained his lips. Keith had said that.

_I love you._

Said it like a saving grace, reverent and feeling. He’d said it like last words. Shiro supposed, at the time, he had probably thought they were.

Now, those three words are circling his mind like the wisp of molten cabernet that has left him feeling pliant and his lips feeling loose, ready to sink ships.

He thinks about how he’d be in his room right now, just the opposite end of the hall from his own. It would take nothing more than a handful of strides, and a sharp rap of his knuckles against the door to see those burning eyes. To ask why.

 _I love you_ , he’d said.

The cool metal of a door against his skin wrenches him from his thoughts, surprised at where his feet have led him roiling low in his gut.

Seconds. It takes mere seconds before the door opens, and he’s there. Concerned, and bright, and there.

“Shiro?” Keith asks, voice smoke and tone liquid worry. His hair is rumpled, and his face soft with sleep.

A small yawn cracks his jaw.

“What’s wrong?”

 _Why?_ The question sticks to the roof of his mouth, dulled by the dry taste of the wine.

“Did you have a nightmare?” He continues, already moving out of the way to let him in. Behind him, Shiro sees Kosmo lift his head, tongue lolling and tail thumping in greeting.

For a brief, flashing moment, it feels like coming home.

“No,” Shiro manages, shaking his head as he crosses the threshold. He prays that Keith doesn’t miss the slight wobble of his step. A pleasant buzz rolls down to his toes, making them warm as he hears the door slide shut behind him.

“Can I stay here tonight?” He asks, words tumbling, stumbling from his lips before he can wrap them in a first thought.

Not, that he thinks it matters.

The thrum at the base of his skull tells him he would have asked anyway.

“Sure,” Keith answers, as if the sound of the locking mechanism wasn’t answer enough. It stokes a contented purr of heat to life in the center of his chest as Keith walks by him, silently inviting him to follow to the small bedroom through the door at the back of the living room.

It’s cozy.

 _It’s home_ , the wine whispers.

 _But it can’t be_ , Shiro bites back as he walks into the dark bedroom, lit only by the slices of  moonlight through the shades.  _We’re in the middle of a war._

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Keith asks, nothing more than a darkened shadow as he watches him from the foot of the bed.

“Yeah,” Shiro breathes as he imagines the look that would be twisting his mouth down. “Just didn’t feel like being alone tonight.”

It’s not a lie, so much as a small version of the truth.

Quiet, heavy and thick, rolls between them like a Southern storm. Sticking to his skin, it raises the hair at the back of his neck as he sees the shape of Keith nod.

“Okay,” he says quietly, moving to the side of the bed with the comforter turned down.

“Okay,” Shiro echoes, mirroring the movement from the opposite side of the bed. With the cover turned down, it’s inviting and plush, almost like the weight of the stare on him.

Not looking up, he settles down into the warmth of Keith’s all too familiar scent, eyelids growing heavy almost as soon as his head finds the pillow.

 _I love you_ , the ghost of a voice whispers in the dark as the bed dips beneath Keith’s weight.

 _Why?_  He wants to ask.

But that one word never comes.

They’re in the middle of a war.

 _There will always be time after_ , he thinks as he drifts soundly into sleep.

***

It’s whiskey the second time, and it burns the words right out of his mouth as he sees Keith looking over him through the bottom of his emptied tumbler. The glass warps him, but he still knows the exact look he has fixed on him, if only because it’s one he’s grown to know so well.

Molded of softened galaxies, it questions, and it worries, almost as if Keith continues to fear that he’ll just disappear.

As if it’s something that he might still fear the most.

The thought, carried on the back of a wave of liquid heat, licks its way down his spine and makes him shudder as he drops the glass on the bar counter.

Ice clinks softly against its confines, jostled by the sudden drop. He returns the appraising look, brazen and courageous as his mind warms with his drink of choice.

It’d been a year since that last time he’d let himself slip like this.

Shiro’s twenty-five now, and the war is over, but the rebuilding has just begun.

And Keith? Keith is leaving in the morning.

“What?” He asks, leaning back slightly in his bar stool as he questions Shiro and the stare he has fixed on him.

He knows it must look as if he’s far gone, lost to the mire of swirling whiskey that slightly blurs his vision. Shiro relies on that, because what he’s doing isn’t allowed.

What he’s doing, is memorizing the strength of Keith’s jaw, and the shape of the lines that crease the corners of his eyes. He’s memorizing the exact shade of his onyx waves, and the obsidian flecked galaxies trapped in his gaze.

What Shiro is doing, is being greedy.

It’s a fault of his really. Has always been when it came to Keith. On most days, he can tamp it down.

But today? Today’s the last day, and he feels it burning like acid in his lungs.

“What?” Keith asks again with a bright smile that Shiro adds to his collection before he looks down at his old, worn leather jacket. “Do I have something on me?”

“No,” Shiro answers truthfully, shaking his head as he pushes his Altean arm toward Keith’s still half full beer and moves it away from him. He tries to ignore the way it weighs a bit heavier now.

“I do think I’m cutting you off, though.”

A scandalized gasp, just this side of too breathy, rips from Keith’s chest as he slaps his hand on it.

“Takashi!” He exclaims before laughing, the sound lifting a pink flush to his cheeks. Shiro wonders if it’s closer to crushed peonies or a peaceful sunrise when Keith continues, voice softer.

Intimate.

Like he’s sharing secrets.

“You’re my best friend, you know.”

 _I love you_ , that old, pesky memory shadowed, buzzing like an undercurrent to his words. Shaking his head with a breathy chuckle, Shiro stands, ignoring his own gentle stumble as he offers an arm out to Keith.

“You’re my best friend, too,” he says, hoping the edge of it doesn’t sound as wrong to Keith as it does to his own ears.

 _Don’t go_ , he wants to add.

“Let me get you home, buddy,” Shiro says instead as Keith throws an arm over his shoulders and sidles off the barstool. His hair tickles his chin as he leans into him.

That’s another thing that Shiro mentally files away as he easily takes on his weight.

He’s grown so much taller.

“You’ve got a big day tomorrow,” he adds as an after thought as he pulls them both to the door.

The walk back to the barracks feels like it goes too slowly, and yet all too quick, filled with the quiet of the late night and the rolling warmth of the alcohol through his veins. It’s volatile, and it mixes like gasoline with the flame of Keith’s skin.

Shiro wonders if it will etch itself into his own, an unseen brand to carry with him over his heart.

 _Don’t go,_  he wants to say when they find themselves in front of Keith’s door.

“Here we are,” he says instead, bracing Keith as he reaches for the lock pad at the edge of the door. There’s a smooth sound as it slides open and he steadies himself against the frame. It’s quiet again, but this time it bows beneath the weight of expectation as Keith clumsily turns, pressing his back into the wall as he looks up at him.

“Here we are,” he agrees, pulling his stare languidly down Shiro’s chest and he feels it like claws. They tear and pull at his skin, and he’s certain if he looks down, he’ll see the stain of blood on his shirt.

“Want to come in?” Keith asks once his gaze flicks back up to capture his own.

 _Yes_ , Shiro thinks, need pulling like a hook behind his belly button as he shakes his head.

“I shouldn’t. You—”

“Have a big day tomorrow,” Keith finishes, mimicking his voice as he smiles.

Shiro doesn’t miss the way it doesn’t reach his eyes.

 _Don’t go_. It hangs on the tip of his tongue, weighted by the dangerous bite of whiskey. All he needs to do is say it.

Two words, with a world of meaning, and all he needs to do, is say them.

Reaching out, Shiro offers his open palm by way of the words.

“Take care, Keith,” he adds, all too aware of the deep indent that works itself between his eyebrows as he takes in the gesture.

Keith is his best friend, something more than, even, and all he can think to offer him is a handshake.

Mentally, he files away his look of disappointment.

“You too, Shiro,” Keith says quietly, hands balled at his sides. They stay there for one breath.

Two breathes.

Three—

Flames erupt through his chest as Keith’s arms wind around his neck, anchoring him to him in a crushing hug. It steals his breath, and several beats of his heart, before he wraps his own around his waist and keeps him close.

Char aches deep in his chest, turning his bone black and filling his lungs with smoke.

 _It’s an honorable death_ , he thinks quietly with a small squeeze.

And then, he’s gone.

Cool air cascades over him, shocking his senses as Keith offers him one last smile.

 _Don’t go_ , he wants to plead.

“Goodnight, Shiro,” he says, dipping his head before pushing through the threshold of his suite.

“Goodnight,” Shiro offers, helplessly.

Hopelessly.

It’s met with the soft hiss of the door sliding shut, and the artificial silence of the hall.

All he had to do was say it.

But it never quite felt like the right time.

Moving quickly down the hall, limbs sobered by the interaction, he finds himself in front of his door.

Standing there, he turns his attention back to the other of the hall, a small, distant hope that Keith will be standing there.

He isn’t.

Shiro sighs lowly, lost to the way Keith’s heat is still burning against his skin in a way he’s sure will haunt him for the rest of the night.

It’s only meant to be a year.

 _There will always be time after_ , he thinks, as he unlocks his door.

***

Shiro’s twenty-eight, and alone in his study the third time.

It’s a hot sip of bourbon, and a rush of a thought, barely there and fleeting, but there all the same.

It’s a soft breath, and onyx waves that don’t match the brunette waiting for him in his bed.

With a quick shake of his head, he presses the half full glass to his desk, eyeing it as if it had any say to the intrusive thought.

The ever stray thoughts had been bound and stored in a hidden darkness at the back of his mind for two years now, leaving behind a ghost that follows Shiro everywhere he goes.

Even lost to the safety of a soft smile, and chocolate eyes, he still feels it like a weighted stare. All consuming, just like phantom he’d been trying to run from.

To compare the two would be an impossibility.

Keith had been a wildfire, filling his veins with smolder and soot, blackening his insides until there was nothing left, while Curtis was a soft ocean tide.

Cooling and calming, with the ability to pull him away from all the noise and settled a careful peace over his soul.

Exact opposites in near every way, it was easy to push down the pain of his forlorn thoughts and the wickedness of that voice at the back of his mind that licked around his thoughts like poison.

 _He’s not him,_ it used to hiss until Shiro had forced it down with a sheer determination.

 _He may not be him, but at least he’s here,_ he’d bitten back until the voice would recede back into the darkness.

Keith’s stay on Daibazaal, meant for just a year, had turned to two, and then three, with communications coming fewer and farer between.

Not that Shiro could even blame him for that. He was doing work alongside Krolia and Kolivan rebuilding the Galran empire, and rebuilding the Blades as a humanitarian force. Their breakthroughs had been revolutionary, and far beyond the scope of what any of the coalition had imagined for such a short amount of time.

Shiro understood, but it had left a distinct hole in his life that he hadn’t been able to fill with work, nor post-war efforts, nor burning liquor.

And then he’d met Curtis.

And then what had once been daily phone calls turned weekly phone calls, had become monthly phone calls, until Shiro couldn’t even remember the last time they’d spoken.

What had even been the last thing that Keith had said to him?

That’s right.

 _Congratulations_.

Pressing his fist of papers down beside his glass, Shiro reaches for his holoscreen, life flickering across its surface as he started to search his contacts.

He could call him, he thinks.

Should call him.

Had he ever even been the one to call first, Shiro wonders, as he rolls through the alphabet before finding his mark.

Sucking the warmth of the bourbon from his teeth, his finger hovers over Keith’s name, a barely there space between his digit and the ‘K.’

It would be so easy to close the distance with a quick tap. Can already hear the tinkling chime of the holoscreen ringing and waiting to be answered. Shiro can even hear the soft sound of Keith saying his name.

A judgement weighs heavy on him with the imagined sound, wrapped around his left ring finger in the form of a shining silver band. Looking down at it, he can’t help but notice the way it winks at him with the soft light of his lamp, watching and waiting.

 _He deserves better_ , Shiro thinks with a sigh before switching the screen off.

Shiro doesn’t linger too long on the fact that even he doesn’t know which  _he_  he means.

Huffing a loud sigh, he pushes the screen away and rubs a hand over his eyes. It’s a futile attempt at scrubbing the bourbon laced thought from his mind.

Instead, he sees the flash of distant galaxies, and a pretty pink flush pressed against the backs of his eyelids.

“Enough,” Shiro growls suddenly, pushing his chair back and standing in one smooth motion. Snatching his glass off of his desk, he quietly pads down the hall to the dark kitchen.

 _There will always be time after_ , a small voice offers as he dumps the rest of his drink down the drain.

 _No_ , he chides, just a shade off bitter, as he sets the tumbler to the side.  _There won’t._

It’s the last drink he has.

***

Shiro is thirty the last time, and it didn’t take a drink at all.

They’d all met for the fifth anniversary of their loss, and the universe’s gain, and it’s the first time Shiro has seen Keith since the divorce. It’s a fact he becomes all too aware of when he sees the way Keith’s gaze flicks to his hand, and then back up, softening at their edges before he offers him a handshake.

The motion tugs at a distant memory as he finds his head spinning with the intensity of Keith’s amethyst eyes as he takes his open palm.

His stare burns like wildfire.

It always had.

Lingering with palms pressed flushed for a tick longer than strictly necessary, Shiro pulls away when he felt something a lot like lightning crack against his sternum.

 _I love you_ , the whisper tickles at his ear in the same way it had for far too long now.

And then, that was it.

Keith had nodded, expression resigned and all knowing as he walked towards where the others have their heads ducked together to look at something Hunk had pulled up on his holoscreen.

Shiro didn’t miss the way he’d pointedly chose a seat on the other end of the table from where he sat, or the way his tone had been diplomatically pleasant when they’d addressed each other. It had been easy to brush away beneath the conversation with their friends, but dinner didn’t last forever, and soon, they were parting ways once more.

More importantly, Keith was leaving once more.

“Let me walk you to your suite,” Shiro calls after him, stopping him before he can disappear into the night. Time folds around itself as he waits for a response, drawing lines across the back of the faded red leather of his jacket.

It’s a shade he’s only ever been able to associate with Keith.

Looking over his shoulder, Keith sizes him up with a dangerous flash in his eyes. Tension rocks down Shiro’s spine in the balanced moment before Keith’s eyes soften and he shrugs.

“Alright,” he throws over his shoulder as he starts to walk once more. The invitation stalls Shiro, roots him in place just long enough to paint real distance between them once more.

Jogging to catch up, he falls in line with Keith’s steps as they make their way towards the proud standing barracks.

It’s like a long lost memory as they move through the quiet night, side-by-side in a silence that they had never needed to be filled. Almost as if nothing had changed at all.

Electricity picks at his sternum as he tracks the path through a memory of a drunken night, a missed confession, and deep regret.

He wondered, if he truly picked through all of his thoughts, how many times he’d made this walk, only for it to come down to the same results.

And then, they’re standing in front of his door.

“Here we are,” Keith pushes through a smile, echoing what felt like a lifetime ago.

 _Here we are,_  Shiro had said last time.

“Can I come in?” He says this time.

Shiro feels the hesitation before he sees it in the way his smile disappears, replaced instead by an electric tension in Keith’s shoulders. It’s palpable, the way it’s roiling under his skin like a lightning storm looking for an escape.

The pause feels like a small eternity before he finally nods, turning away to press his palm to the lock pad. Keith never was good about not letting him in.

He aches with the fact that he’s undeserving of that too.

Not looking back, Keith steps over the threshold, flicking the light on to reveal the all too familiar layout. Dust and the thick scent of mustiness cling to it, but it’s still the same.

Shiro had never been able to let them reassign it.

The soft swish of the door closing behind him seals him into the dizzying feel of deja vu.

“What happened?” Keith asks, not turning to look at him as he speaks, dropping his jacket on the unused couch. Leather hitting the cushions is the only sound that stands between between. The air feels dangerous with the delicate quiet.

It’s just waiting to be shattered.

“What do you mean?” He asks, but he knows. Shiro can feel the absence of his ring like a loosened noose.

It doesn’t choke, but it’s there.

It’s the wrong thing to say, and he knows it as soon as the question drips from his lips. All the evidence he needs is the way Keith turns on his heel with a snarl twisting his lips.

“You know what I mean,” he growls, eyes flashing yellow and expression fierce. In that moment, Keith looks inhuman. Galran.

 _Beautiful_ , Shiro’s mind supplies.

The flash is a mere second before his face crumples and he pulls a deep breath between his teeth. Taking a step back, he levels Shiro with a look of composure before he repeats, “what happened?”

The truth of it is, nothing happened. Comfortable, and safe, their relationship was a tepid thing, ending in a mutual split. There hadn’t been any mess to it, which, almost made it worse.

 _You were never meant for this life, Takashi,_  Curtis had said before pressing a last kiss to his lips, and his ring to Shiro’s open palm. Shiro had heard the undercurrent of what he’d really meant.

_You were never meant to be with me._

He’d tried denying it. To Curtis. To himself.

Shiro had loved him. He truly had. But love, as it turned out, wasn’t enough when you’d already been broken apart and rebuilt by the hands of someone else.

Keith’s mark had been left on him like a signature, like a brand, and no matter how he’d tried to hide it, it still bled through.

“Keith,” Shiro breathes, soft and low. It’s a plea for salvation. For repentance. For everything he’s done wrong. He’s done so much wrong.

They were supposed to have had time.

 _I was always meant to be with you_ , he wants to say.

“Shiro,” Keith counters, and it cuts like a warning, sounds like a curse.

“It didn’t work,” is all he manages. It comes out strangled, a wisp of a truth that barely brushes past his lips.

“It didn’t work,” he repeats, trying to put strength into his admission.

“Why?” Keith pushes, folding his arms over his chest defensively. The stance makes him look smaller, even if his gaze burns straight through him.

Shaking his head, Shiro begins to the the room as it begins to shrink around them. The weight of the walls crush into his shoulders, pressing the air from his lungs.

They were supposed to have had all that time.

 _I love you_ , Keith’s voice roars at his ear, as if it was from the Keith made of flesh and bone, and not that ghost that had clung to him for so long.

“You have to know,” Shiro all but whispers, dropping his stare long enough to catch his bearings before looking up through his lashes in time to see the way Keith falters.

 _I love you._ Keith had unknowingly haunted his dreams with those three words that he’d never been able to return.

There was supposed to have been time.

_I love you._

“I love you,” Shiro lets his words curl around the memory. They fall bluntly between them, landing flat and dull, before there’s a flash of movement and the sharp snap of his head against the door.

It triggers another memory that he can see flash in the yellow of Keith’s eyes.

They stay yellow this time.

“Why,” Keith bites out, snapping the syllable between his fangs. “Why now?”

Heat crushes against his windpipe as Keith presses into him with the flat of his forearm. The pressure catches his words in his throat, forcing him to shake his head against it as he tries to turn his gaze anywhere than the flames that threaten to turn him to ash.

There’s no good answer.

Not one that will make it better, anyway.

Keith leans further into his forearm.

“Always,” he chokes out. Tears catch at the corners of his eyes as his lungs start to burn with the lack of air, but he doesn’t struggle. Doesn’t try to pull away.

Shiro’s done that enough.

“I didn’t say it.” His voice is nothing but scraps beneath the choke of his arm. “Keith.”

There’s a tremble against his throat, then the squeeze of more pressure before Keith hisses and pushes away. Cool air falls on him, filling his lungs as he gasps in an attempt to drag as much of it as he can down into his chest. Anything to put out the wildfire that’s waging a war beneath his bone.

“You didn’t say it,” Keith agrees, eyeing him warily. His stance is animalistic, and ready to flee. “You didn’t say anything at all.”

A lick of thunder, palpable and crushing rolls between them.

“Keith,” Shiro tries once he’s caught his breath only to be cut off.

“I waited,” Keith says lowly, shifting his stare downward. “You needed time, and I waited.”

“And then you left.” He doesn’t mean to say it. It’s a knee-jerk reaction to an infinitesimal moment in a long list of cataclysmic events.

Keith had left once, but Shiro had left time and time again.

“And you let me!” He hurls back, heaving with the burden of his anger. “Then you got married.”

The last word is a sneer, and it buries itself in the middle of Shiro’s chest as he flicks his gaze past Keith’s shoulder and to the off white wall. He’d look anywhere to avoid the cutting edge of hurt that has turned Keith into a weapon of the strongest design.

“So was he the replacement,” he growls, “or am I?”

The blow is low, and aimed for the space between his ribs where it stabs through him like a heated knife. It rakes a gasp, hard and harsh, from deep in his throat as he looks up in time to see the way Keith bites into the meat of his bottom lip.

“Neither of you,” Shiro wraps the answer in a whisper that shatters something in the tension holding Keith’s shoulders so taught. Visibly deflating, he watches the way Keith’s knuckles pull white over bone as he clenches his fists, and then lets go.

A vague flicker of something a lot like hope licks at Shiro’s nerves when he steps forward, and Keith doesn’t move away.

“Why?” The word breaks around the sound of a half formed sob as the black curtain of his hair hangs in his face, covering his eyes.

_Why now? Why me? Why?_

Shiro hears every question trapped in the hitching breath as he takes another careful step forward.

“There was supposed to be time, and we—” he breathes, stalling at the word, because it never was we, was it?

“I never got it right.”

Liquid lines Keith’s eyes as he looks up, the watery look making him look younger. Untouched by the burdens of a war that had taken him across universes.

There’s a strange brightness there too. Of fear, or of hope.

Maybe they’re one in the same.

“I could never be right,” Shiro finally admits. And that had always been the problem, hadn’t it? It was never about time, or places, or other versions of himself, but him. He had never let himself be the right that Keith needed, because Keith deserved more than he could ever be.

They’d pushed each other to be better and better, until Keith had surpassed him, and Shiro had decided that he deserved the entire universe, and not just a man who had foolishly tried to hold it.

“Be right now.”

It’s a whisper, almost lost to the breadth of the space between them. For a moment, he thinks he imagines it until he sees the flicker of a gaze through Keith’s bangs.

They both move then, meeting with a cataclysmic clash that reverberates through Shiro’s entire being. It shakes him wholly, as he feels something snap within his chest, and then he’s on fire. Burning, his skin is blackening and peeling back from bone, exposing his nerves to the ache of unbridled starlight on his skin.

It tears him down, exposes him, as he feels arms around his neck and the scratch of nails at his nape.

Opening his lips to a heated gasp, they move against each other, lost to the act of discovery as they track searing lines across each others skin. Stumbling blindly together through the living room, they push past the door of Keith’s bedroom.

Shiro hasn’t been in this room in six years, but he can’t help but linger on the fact that he still remembers the exact number of steps.

A moan brushes across his lip as he slides his metallic palm across the small of Keith’s back and drags his other down the back of his thigh. Curling his fingers at the back of his knee, he pulls it up over his hip as he lowers Keith down onto the bed. He does it slowly, carefully, like he’s breakable.

Like he’s precious.

Like everything that he always had been.

Continuing his exploration, Shiro captures snapshots of moments as he lets his hands roam under Keith’s shirt.

Soft skin.

Softer moans.

The fluttering stutter of his breath, half formed around his name.

Pushing the fabric up towards Keith’s chest, he only pulls away long enough to draw it over his head.

“I’m sorry,” he says then.

It’s easier to say into the darkness of the night, but it doesn’t feel like it’s enough.

No, it isn’t enough.

It will never be enough, but it’s all he has to offer as he presses the words like small offerings into Keith’s skin.

He arches blissfully up into his mouth as he traces the expanse of his chest, revering the goosebumps and pink flush that spreads across it in his wake.

“I’m sorry,” Shiro breathes again, fingers brushing across the dark hair below his belly button before they start to make work of his belt. The metal of the buckle clinks loudly in the darkness, joined only by Keith’s escalating breaths as he nips as his hip.

 _Beautiful_ , he thinks. Or maybe he says, as Keith let’s out a small whine, his hips rolling upward as he pulls his dark pants away. Brushing his hand carefully against him, Shiro revels in the heavy heat that fills his palm as he licks a stipe along the underside of his length.

“Shiro,” Keith moans when he opens his lips around him, taking him carefully against his tongue. Fingers brush through his bangs as he rolls his tongue. They grip at them when he slowly starts to push closer, taking him further until his nose brushes against the soft skin of his stomach.

 _I’m sorry_ , he thinks, as he pushes and pulls, working Keith until he’s writhing with the forceful sounds of his gasping moans and pressing up into the heat of his mouth.

It’s a flurry of movement, burning heat, and the sharp tug at his scalp before Keith comes across the flat of his tongue with the softest of sounds.

Just a breath, like he’s finally letting go.

“Shiro,” he hushes, pulling him with the grip of his hair to crash their mouths together. Licking his own taste from his mouth, Keith moans his name like a quiet prayer, filling each syllable of it with new emotion.

Anger. Hate. Pain. Fear. Joy. Love.

“It’s okay,” Shiro breathes, moving his lips against Keith’s as he speaks. Running his knuckles up over the hardened muscle of his arms, Shiro tracks the path up over his shoulder until he can open his palm against his neck.

Pressed against it, he can feel the quick beat of his heart as he pulls him close, settling his back against the plain headboard of the Garrison issued bed and Keith against his chest. The darkness of the room crushed down upon them, weighted heavy and comfortable as he loses track of time to the slowing cadence of Keith’s breaths.

“I love you,” Shiro whispers after a stolen eternity. “I don’t deserve to, but I do.”

Keith’s hand stretches wide across his chest, pressed just above his heart as he starts to brush the pad of his thumb back and forth against the steady rhythm that it beats.

“Takashi,” Keith says low, brushing his name across his skin. He chases it with the soft press of his lips.

“I love you,” he echoes, voice dripping with the same sincerity that he’s treasured for so long.

It drifts through them, ebbing them slowly into a soft shadow of sleep, and Shiro thinks that maybe this is it. A love to fight for. A love to lose for. A love to cross universes, and lose universes for.

A love to force the fickle hand of time for.

The thought enraptures him as he turns it over and over, smoothing it like a stone until he’s lulled into the basking warmth of sleep.

 _This is it_ , he dreams, for hours, or maybe for minutes, until it’s shaken away by the bed shifting beneath Keith’s weight as he rolls away from him.

He does it quietly, stealthily, as if he hadn’t planned on waking Shiro at all.

 _There’s time_ , he thinks hazily as he reaches forward, capturing the fine bones of Keith’s wrist in his hand.  _There’s time now._

“Stay,” Shiro says.

No, he pleads.

“Stay.”

The night is quiet, but alive, writhing like a live wire with the force of his request. It clears the fog of sleep from his mind as he looks up into Keith’s eyes, lit by the sinking moon.

 _Stay_. He should have said it then.

So Shiro says it now.

He knows it isn’t enough, but it’s an infinitesimal start to an eternity he’s all too willing to spend making it enough.

“Please,” he breathes when he feels the sudden tension of Keith’s hesitation. It starts as a moment, that stretches into a breath, and finally into a contained lifetime before he feels Keith turn back toward him.

“Okay,” he says into the night, dropping back into the mattress and leaning back into the burning, aching space of Shiro’s chest.

“Okay,” Shiro hums, as he holds him close once more.

***********

**Author's Note:**

> ~~fun fact: the title comes from none of those songs. if you know where it is from, shhhhhhh~~


End file.
